Cultural preview / Museums

Through Dec. 21

The Smart Museum fills every inch of its galleries with sculpture, ranging from Rodin to Buddhist devotional statues. The anchor of a 40th-anniversary commemoration, "Carved, Cast, Crumpled: Sculpture All Ways," looks at the museum's place as a three-dimensional-art destination, which commenced with its inaugural show of modern sculpture in 1974. A bonus: The "interpreter in residence" is performance group 500 Clowns, which concocted a deck of cards featuring offbeat questions meant to spark viewer engagement.

Through April 26

At the Field Museum's"Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti," don't expect to see dolls poked by straight pins. Haiti's living religion is displayed through 300 contemporary and historical objects, including altars, drums and large-scale representations of spirits. Although the exhibition eschews horror-film stereotypes, be prepared for a shock: Prominent themes and objects include human remains, skulls and practitioners' blurred notions of life and death.

Douglas Druick is president and Eloise W. Martin director of the Art Institute of Chicago. He talks about the institute's James Ensor exhibit, which centers around one monumental drawing with a most remarkable provenance. "It has a hallucinatory effect, a willfulness."

Douglas Druick, 69, is president and Eloise W. Martin director of the Art Institute of Chicago. He talks about the institute's James Ensor exhibit.

Crain's: The museum's James Ensor exhibit centers around one monumental drawing you helped acquire in 2006. What makes it so significant?

Mr. Druick: The drawing was brought to our attention by a Belgian dealer. I didn't know about it at the time—no one had seen it since 1951. It's the most ambitious work of Ensor's career and a missing link in our understanding of his work. Ensor kept it in his studio for most of his career, until 1940. He sells it in 1920, but he asks to live with it. The poor man who buys it dies before Ensor ceded it.

What was it like to see a previously unknown masterwork?

I was intrigued, but getting the drawing was a gamble. We had to initially ask ourselves what could be cleaned. It endured damage during the war in bomb blasts while sitting in the studio. We worked to restore it for six years.

What was revealed?

It's crawling with life—St. Anthony tempted by the demons, glutton, temptation—and the astonishing thing is the closer you become, you can't see some figures. It has a hallucinatory effect, a willfulness. Ensor's teasing us—he knows something is there, and he knows you don't know about it.

AT RIGHT : James Ensor's "The Bathing Hut" →

Did you expect restoration and research to last so long that you'd need to hand it off when promoted to director from curator?

Not quite, no. I was deeply involved, then my life changed and I was director. A new, gifted curator, Nancy Ireson, took the ball and ran with it, discovered new things. She became friends with Belgian artists and shed new light on the drawing and its meaning. Now we have a story to tell—which is what the exhibit is all about—more rich and complex than we could have imagined.

Nov. 15-Aug. 16

As State Street gained a reputation as "that great street," the city made nearby Michigan Avenue equally "magnificent." The Chicago History Museum captures the midcentury explosion of high-end department stores and vertical shopping malls in "Chicago Styled: Fashioning the Magnificent Mile." Illustrating the street's retail growth are ensembles from Gianni Versace, Christian Lacroix, Yohji Yamamoto and Chanel—all plucked from the museum's costume collection, the nation's second-largest.